Accomplishments: Won four Super Bowls with Steelers, 1975, '76, '79 and '80. Was 209-156-1 all-time with the Steelers. Inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993. Named NFL Coach of the Year in 1989. Was 25-21 against the Browns.

"He grew up like I did under the Paul Brown School of Football," said Shula, the Grand River native who played for the Browns from 1951-53. "That was Paul Brown's main attribute -- he, too, was like a classroom teacher. Chuck followed that."

He was an actual teacher, too, to supplement his income. Because Noll's football contract paid only $5,000 annually, he worked as a teacher at Holy Name, and sold insurance on the side.

By 1959, Noll had lost his job with the Browns to John Wooten, and realized his future would be in continuing his teaching career -- in coaching.

Noll's first stop was in the American Football League, as a defensive line coach for the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers. In six years with the Chargers, the team won five division titles and one AFL championship. He soon slid over to coach the linebackers and secondary, and the Chargers led the AFL in pass defense each of his last three seasons.

He joined the Baltimore Colts in 1966 working under Shula on a staff where four of the five assistants later became NFL head coaches, along with Bill Arnsparger, Don McCafferty and John Sandusky. Again in charge of defense, Noll's coaching philosophy began to solidify. The 1968 team set an NFL record for fewest points allowed with 144.

"Chuck was just a natural teacher," Shula said. "He explained how to do things and wrote up the techniques. He was one of the first coaches I was around that wrote up in great detail all of the techniques used by players -- for example, the backpedal and the defensive back's position on the receiver. He was like a classroom teacher. He used a lot of those techniques as a football coach."

After three years of polishing, when Penn State coach Joe Paterno spurned the Steelers' head coaching advances, Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney liked what he saw in Noll.

He liked the way Noll evaluated players and the way he showed no prejudices. And he liked how Noll was a true teacher who would succinctly break down goals and plans.
In Noll's first team meeting with the 1969 Steelers, in fact, he told players that the goal was to win the Super Bowl. A few players snickered -- the Steelers were coming off a 2-11-1 season in 1968, after all. Even so, those players weren't at training camp for much longer. "Mean" Joe Greene, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle, was in his first year in the NFL but understood what Noll was saying.

"Our goal wasn't necessarily that year or the next year or the next year," Greene said. "But the goal was to win the Super Bowl. He set it in place. The ideas and philosophy were implanted in us. ... What he was instilling in everybody there was the mind-set and the belief in what we were doing, and the belief in one another."

From that day on, Noll built the Steelers in his image -- gritty, tough and focused. After Pittsburgh went 1-13 his first year, they improved each of the next three, finishing 11-3 in 1972. He melded Greene with quarterback Terry Bradshaw, Swann and running back Franco Harris, sewing together a team that would send nine players and Noll to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

It was a conglomeration of fiercely individual personalities -- he battled with Bradshaw through the years -- but Greene said Noll had a gift of allowing players to be themselves within the team system. Only when behavior became detrimental to the team did Noll say something.

Greene earned his "Mean" nickname for his growling anger and temper. Once, after Greene erupted at a referee, Noll finally approached his star defensive tackle.

"You know, Joe," Noll said, "those officials are people, too. They don't like being talked to that way."

"He just said it very matter-of-factly," Greene said. "And from that day on, I changed how I responded to those guys. It was something about Chuck and the way he goes about his words."

Noll was so determined to stay out of the spotlight that in his 23 years in Pittsburgh, he agreed to just one endorsement deal -- as a favor to a friend for Pittsburgh National Bank. Noll didn't realize his mug would be plastered on billboards all over town, and he grimaced each time he drove by one. He didn't have a TV show or radio show, didn't write books.

"It's just my nature," he once told Sports Illustrated. "I've always been that way. I've always avoided publicity. I've never been good copy at any stage of my life. I don't strive for it, because I don't think it's important whether I'm good copy or not. The two can go together, if that's your personality, but every person on this earth is unique. I've never tried to pattern myself after anybody. You have to be what you are, and this is what I am."

A man of few words is never a good quality for reporters. At one Steelers' Super Bowl appearance, someone reportedly posted a note in the press box bulletin board that said: "Highlights of Chuck Noll's Press Conference." A large white space sat underneath.

Media vote for the NFL coach of the year, which might explain why Noll never received the award until 1989. He didn't get it once over the span of 1974 to 1979, when the Steelers won four Super Bowls.

"That's a crock," Swann said. "I think that was one of the worst disgraces by those who voted for the award throughout the '70s."

But that was Noll's choice. Occasionally, he would show glimpses of his world -- he loved fine wine, flew planes, enjoyed boating, loved photography and taught his nephews about the beauty of nature and rare birds. Occasionally, but not often.

"I lived a block away from him, literally, for six years of my career," said former Steelers safety Mike Wagner. "He didn't say, 'Hey, come on over anytime you have questions.' He kept his social life private and his interests to himself."

His fingerprints are still all over this Steelers-Browns rivalry, with a 25-22 record against Cleveland -- though he never felt any extra incentive to top his hometown team. Greg Rufus, the son of Noll's Benedictine coach, Joe, said Noll once showed up at a Cleveland hospital to visit his dad unannounced -- the morning of the Browns-Steelers game.

"Chuck, what are you doing here?" a flabbergasted Joe Rufus asked.

"Joe, you coach during the week," Noll said. "There's nothing I could do on a Sunday morning that's going to make my team win. My team learns to win Thursday through Saturday."

For Noll, football and life rarely intersected. He was passionate about the game during the week and on the field, but just as vehement about keeping his private life out of view.

So no matter what anyone says, this Browns-Steelers game didn't incite extra emotion from Noll, didn't cause him to plead with his players to win one for him because the city and the team once meant so much to him.

And his players never wanted to see that.

"Then I couldn't tell you what I'm telling you about Chuck," Greene said. "That wouldn't have been him. In my view, it would have devalued him. He still would have been Chuck, but that wouldn't have been him if he'd shown those kinds of emotions. Chuck was special."

Even if not many have ever been able to see it.

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